It was only a matter of time. A few weeks after every money losing firm in the US and the kitchen sink disclosed it would sue Bank of America in an accelerating attempt to salvage something through litigation, the worst case scenario for Brian Moynhian just got real. As of minutes ago, Norway's Government Pension Fund, which is another name for its Sovereign Wealth Fund, has just announced it is suing Bank of America for mortgage fraud. Not only that but it is also going after Countrywide, obviously, but far more importantly, is also suing KPGM, the auditor on the Countrywide transaction, and, drumroll, ole' Agent Orange himself. If US bank analysts were busy quantifying the damages from every bank in the US suing BofA, just wait until the calculation is expanded to included every firm that bought mortgages from Bank of America... ever...in the entire world.

Pension Fund chief Yngve Slyngstad suing mortgage company Country-wide, the owner Bank of America and KPMG in the U.S. for fraud, newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.

Billions are at the game.

The Fund and 14 other large institutional investors meetings the parties to a court in California.

They claim that Countrywide - formerly the largest U.S. lender for residential purposes - held back important information and concealed the extent of credit risk that the company took. The company was one of the largest lending founders of so-called subprime loans, which was a major cause of financial crisis.

Because of the misrepresentation of the company and senior management, bought the oil fund and other investors in Countrywide shares at artificially high prices from March 2004 to March 2008, according to the fund.

Angelo Mozilo and two other former directors sued as well. They should have enriched himself personally by selling shares of "several hundred million dollars" based on information that was not available in the market.

The company's auditor KPMG and Bank of America, which bought the company in 2008, accused in the lawsuit.

"Countrywide's shares traded as high as $ 45 2 februar 2007. February 2007. Just over a year later was the stock down by about 90 percent, which caused investors billions of dollars in losses, "the oil fund's press spokesperson Bunny Nooryani in an email.

She would not identify the values ??at stake.

The Fund reported last year, the requirements in 50 different cases pending before courts, but rarely direct legal action themselves. It shows the Fund's annual report for 2010, according to Dagens Næringsliv.

And just like the US lawsuit spigot opened ever so slowly at first, it is now gushing, and is absolutely certain that every company (ahem insolvent German banks) that ever bought a mortgage from Countrywide, Merrill and Bank of America will serve the local branch of the bank with a summons over the next month.

All those wondering just what rainy day BofA and all other banks had been conserving their ever growing cash stash for, just got their answer.

And the funniest, or saddest depending on one's perspective, thing is: insolvent European banks, as long as they bought any toxic bonds without doing much if any homework, are about to pad their empty coffers courtesy of America's biggest bank... which in turn will lead to TARP 2, better known as the taxpayer funded bailout of European bank with a Bank of America conduit.

Sort of sad really, those that bought in had all the sophistication that BAC had and sometimes more, they knew what they were investing in, the ground floor of a ponzi, but the sad part in all of this is that the individuals responsible will neither go to jail nor will their personal assets be attached. This piling in for the kill only assures that BAC will be destroyed and a lot of good people with it, purely for revenge, but those that should suffer will not. OPEN LINK IN A NEW TAB and pour a fresh one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4X9ciZfZQw&feature=related

Have a drink and listen and think, think what could have been had man lot let the wealthy fuckers screw it up for all the rest.

I don't understand why Fannie & Freddie are getting off scott free. These bastards should be sued, tarred, featherd, caned, whipped etc... also. They're the ones that set the loose parameters that the banks / mortgage companies followed. They should ALL be named in the suit.

Then you clearly do not understand just how corrupt and broken our entire US/American society has become. The kleptocrats and other criminals that oversee our government and banking industry have completely destroyed all honesty and transparency. They look out for their own and a few million here, a few million there, and people keep their mouth shut.

Like most problems, this Norway one will go away with a few bought off officials leaving the citizens of Norway no better off than when this press release was generated. All this press release is for is to make sure the criminals at BAC see that the kleptocrats in Norway are serious---give us some money to enrich ourselves or we will keep producing press releases.

Michael... I think you should make your colleague aware of this bit of info... PAGE isn't mentioned in the article but it's the first Chinese platform coming on line to offer large scale convertibility... "Yuan convertible by 2015: China to EU Chamber"...

"Chinese officials told European Union business executives that the yuan will achieve “full convertibility” by 2015, EU Chamber of Commerce in ChinaPresident Davide Cucino said.

“We were told by those officials by 2015,” Cucino told reporters in Beijing yesterday, declining to identify the government departments involved. He said the step-by-step process was indicated at a meeting in the last several weeks."

One thing is sure though: the US have triggered the hostilities on their own banks to make sure they have initiative on this topic and not spread a usvsthem mentality that would be damageful to the US.

US citizens have never been interested in justice, they are only interested in being in control of Injustice. Dont be on the wrong side of it and now and then, well, choosing your own punishment is much better than having to face punishment made up by others, specially if it helps to maintain control over injustice.

This is exactly the unintended consequences of playing politics with 'justice'.

Everyone in the game had a line of respect that they would not cross because of the 'club', even though their 'brothers' in the US lied and abused thirty years of trust in selling the shit to them. No one would have ever expected that the sellers were at the same time putting this shit together in order that they could short it----a few loose emails from GS, remember?

Bankers are not always 'nice people', but the Europeans thought that doing business over a long period of time with another bank meant that one did not lie or commit fraud in these relationships. Our boys, broke all of the norms of behavior of the civilized world----they lied and cheated and stole the money.

What is really interesting to me is that our banks got the money and spent it and now they may go out of business leaving a shitload of derivatives hanging-----I don't understand any of the derivative stuff, but I think this means that 'debt forgiveness' may take the form of evaporation under the process called bankruptcy---

The TBTF banks may have bitten the poison pellet----thanks to playing politics with the justice system because sure as hell the president signed off on the hfha suit---a half baked, ill prepared piece of shit

well, it's about time we came to this----will these cases be heard in the victim's country? I don't know, but as my grandson says, "I think so" om

B of A was a proud and well run bank, it was people, men, they did this and they should pay. I am starting to think we need a corporate Nuremberg Court to find out which persons were responsible for what. At what level is death warranted? At what level is life in prison? At what level do they walk but with a mark on their record that does not allow them to handle the money of others, or sit with children? Mark my words right now, what is being done is no less in the west and America that the sweeping fascist empire of the thirties and forties. It is a crime with real victims, too organized not to be a conspiracy, not enough evidence of colusion to convict individuals, but epic displacement and destruction just the same. And there are people doing this, acting in concert even if we can't prove a Wannsee meeting.

I would like to see everybody with unearned income over $500,000 total in their lives stand up for an audit. Everyone with total assets over 2 million, audit. If any of it was from bonuses gotten after TARP confiscate it. No matter the consequences, and I do not say that lightly.

It - the credit driven housing bubble - was blown for the sake of US Empire.

Dispersed liquidity flow via the home construction and all related businesses increased GDP and IRS revenues all of which sustained the world's faith in the "full faith and credit of the US government" - i.e. continued USD world reserve status, US bond sales, US military hegemony etc etc with all the associated benefits for the US corporate bankster and armed and security forces elites and providers and their peons' buy-in.

US owes its past decade's growth to Mozillo, Fannie, Freddie and all the other scumbags - because IF THE FAKE GROWTH HADN'T BEEN CREATED - THER WOULD HAVE BEEN NO GROWTH.

The US economy (and empire) was cratering in August 2001. If not for a war-footing event, there would have been no growth for the remainder of the first decade of this century, while working off the combined credit excesses of the Y2K tech boom, and the dot.com boom. By the same token, we would not be in the present position, would we?

This ledgerdemain, I think, will not work as successfully again. Instead, we reap what was sown......

Eureka... What you say is certainly true but there is much more at stake than BOA, or any individual bank. A good case can be made that the world, and especially the US, needs to down size it's financial sector.

The entire world (all exporters) are dependent on the US as a dumping ground for consumer goods.

The 'dollar system' allows the current world financial system (exporters/importers) to exist and continue.

The system has been disrupted by stagnant wages paid to US consumers, hobbling US consumption, and serial bubbles blown by Fed interest rate policies. The major cause for stagnant US wages was the blossoming of the US Financial sector; ie, financialization of the US economy after Nixon closed the gold window to soverigns.

While the size of the US financial sector grew by about 40%, US workers pay remained stagnant as the finance sector salaries and bonuses grew by leaps and bounds.

Without a driver for higher US wages the decline of the current Bretton Woods dollar system (US as importer of last resort) will continue to deterioriate.

Neither the Fed nor the US Gov has monetary or fiscal tools to fix the lack of wage increases for US workers... Witness the wages of today are the same as 25 years ago in inflation adjusted terms. Historically, the driver for wages has been flourishing small businesses... and, they have been hobbled by regulation and financialization. The financiers want a bigger piece of the US economic pie and they are getting it...at the expense of destroying the system that allowed them to flourish.

A failure of the Bretton Woods Dollar system means collapse of the current world economic model.

Exporters and importers are equally caught in this dollar system trap as the various countries attempt to devalue their fiat to retain their share of the exporting pie.

The world financial system as it exists is doomed to failure sans serious restructuring, and since the financial system has a strangle hold on soverigns there is little hope of meaningful restructuring.

The USD reserve currency has been the root cause of the trade imbalances but the calculus is that it worked well for the US -- we got to consume way more than we deserve (for mere exchange of paper/electronic digits), the valuable commodities (eg. 30% of world oil consumption) to the point the easy supplies are getting exhausted. There is plenty of potential consumer demand in the world -- in Asia, Africa, South America but the global financial system is configured to support consumption in the OECD countries and to keep down the rest.

So, for all the whining that I hear on ZH and elsewhere, this system was perpetrated for our benefit. Else we are in denial.

Simple really, they already reached their end game and the markets saw that there would be default, so interest rates shot up to the point where even if someone was dumb enough to lend them more they could not afford the vig on it. But, the Germans and French banks and financial institutions had so much exposure to the PIGS that to simply sit by and watch as these nations defaulted and left the EZ would have been the death of the core EZ banks. So, Germany and France, but more Germany, put a gun to the heads of those nations in deep shit and said they would require them to borrow enough to repay the French and German bankers. It might have looked like a bailout of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, but it was not, it was a bailout of the banks. Not only that but it was at interest rates that are unsustainably high.

In the case of Ireland it was a housing bubble that was the driver, and keep in mind Ireland does not allow one to discharge mortgage debt in bankruptcy, if you get behind you better start planning to emigrate. Spain also had a huge bubble, but in their case the bailouts are really too large for the bailout fund, and Italy is just not even to be considered, it would require Germany and France to float trillions just for Italy alone. Not bailing them out will result in a depression, bailing them out will result in hyperinflation/depression eventually.

Will these crooks EVER get exactly what they deserve? Massive jail time and ALL their ill-gotten gains confiscated? Never!!! Only if the people finally wake up and "force" it on them, will justice be served.

THIS PIECE OF TRASH IS ONLY THE CARCASS OF WHAT IT USE TO BE, THE SOONER THEY PUT IT OUT OF ITS MISERY THE BETTER THE WORLD WILL BE, HOWEVER I THINK THE HOODLUMS AT THE FED CARTEL HAVE OTHER PLANS FOR HUMANITY, PLANS THAT THE SHEEPLE ARE JUST CLUELESS ABOUT, ...IF YOU DON'T HAVE GOLD AND SILVER, WHAT YOU HAVE ARE ONLY ILLUSIONS, ....AND MIRROS.

couldn't care less for BoA, but come on! Is every asset manager in the world also going to give back his/her 8% mbs returns from 2000 - 2007? They were all loving it then, isn't it obvious that those gains weren't real.

I mean I agree that they probably have a case. It's just that no one thought this was fraud back then becuase most were under the 'history tells us the future' spell. Once everyone realized that housing prices do actually go down, then we decided that bad loans were fraud, because the underlying assets wouldn't back stop the investments. If housing prices don't go down, no fraud complaints. So on we go, lets just drag a couple more trillion dollars through the courts. Maybe our grandchildren will know what economic growth is like.

I live in a timewarp where ethics are important---and there is, at least, honor among thieves. Everyone here understands understands that just because a couple of generations are ethically corrupt that 'it ain't over yet'.

The universe is not a personal place, so justice in the universe is what is----I am disillusioned because of 'my' expectations until I remember that it is not personal, but because of a desire for 'justice' I get excited at each trial;